Is this Albert Park's worst house or its most expensive piece of land?

Emily Power

Worst house on the best street

57 Draper Street, Albert Park.

A shabby cottage with a million dollar price tag in Albert Park is bricks and mortar proof that the worst house on the best street will draw big bucks.

Like a pimple on a supermodel, the unsightly shack sits amongst $10 million-plus mansions in one of Melbourne’s most luxurious precincts, the historic and picturesque St Vincent Garden. Agency hockingstuart is quoting $1.2 million for the early Victorian weatherboard wreck on Albert Park’s posh Draper Street.

Despite rotting timber, a beaten tin roof, ripped linoleum floors, an outside loo and grimy walls among a long list of renovation requirements, the number 57 knockdown job has no shortage of potential buyers, proving the power of ‘location, location, location’.

Just over its back fence loom the grand terraces of St Vincent Place, Albert Park’s most expensive street.

Advertisement

A modernised 1873 mansion in St Vincent Place, Hollyford, set a price record for the prestige suburb last month when it fetched close to $12 million.

Hockingstuart agent David Wood, who also sold Hollyford, said workers cottages in blue-chip locations can be some of the most expensive real estate based on dollars per square metre. He described the humble Draper Street house, which is on 220 square metres of land, as a purchase “not for the faint hearted”.

“It is an example of a Victorian workers cottage that was built around the mansions to [accommodate] the staff who would attend to those [houses],” he said.

“The best use for this property is as a new home site.

“If somebody is going to invest in this to rebuild or renovate they can do so safe in the knowledge they are rubbing shoulders with golden real estate.”

St Vincent Place curves around the landscaped St Vincent Gardens and is protected by Heritage Victoria.

The wider St Vincent Garden zone, including Draper Street, is considered of historical significance and has a heritage overlay to protect the facades.

Property valuer Tony Kelly, managing director of Melbourne firm Herron Todd White, said the cottage was worth about $5,500 per square metre, which was not uncommon for Albert Park.

“Albert Park is one of the most expensive suburbs calculated on a rate of per square metre,” Mr Kelly said.

“You do have big and expensive homes in the likes of Toorak, but on a per square metre basis the [most expensive] suburbs are Albert Park, followed by Carlton, and then possibly East Melbourne.

“What is more evident in these suburbs is that the buyers are the type that can afford to immediately rebuild and aren’t willing to live in it and wait a year before renovating.

“Their philosophy – and because of their ability to pay – is to knock it down and a rebuild a modern style of accommodation.”